


Circling A Fault Line

by Dikhotomia



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Back again playing with what-ifs, Eventual Smut, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Military Weiss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Schnee family disaster, This is what happens when I write in the middle of the night, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Yang and Weiss are not okay, of a sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: They bend and bend and bend, but what happens when they finally break? Is it brittle, or is it clean?Weiss and Yang deal with the aftermath of the Fall of Beacon, together and in their own ways.(AKA the Weiss takes Yang back to Atlas with her AU no one asked for.)





	Circling A Fault Line

**Author's Note:**

> 'Can I finish two things at once?' The true question.
> 
> Anyway a tiny background for this AU is that Weiss lost her right arm and both legs in an assassination attempt when she was little. She wears a uniform similar to Winter's to hide the fact and chose never to come clean about it to her team. Because of it her personality is a little different from canon.

She knew exactly what to expect when Yang woke up; the haunted look, the ache, the acute sense of knowing what should be there wasn't. She knew what to expect because she had gone through the same thing, the nightmares, the hypervigilence, jumping at shadows and running for cover at every crash that reverberated like an explosion through the manor's halls.

Years and two re-fittings later, Weiss still hadn't fully recovered and she doubted she ever would. She was better, but there were things that still broke her defenses down, that still made her remaining hand shake and her heart leap insistently into her throat with a sour knot of bile. 

Beacon had dragged it all back up to the surface, the nightmares different but her waking horror the same. She knows how she looks, haunted, eyes bruise rimmed with exhaustion. But she conducts business the way she always did, quick and efficient with just the right amount of small talk to be polite.

Klein still worries, Whitley still watches her like she might snap again and her father once again keeps her trapped underneath his thumb, pressing until she thinks she might choke.

(She was already suffocating.)

So when Yang's eyes snap to where she stands in the doorway, body tension rod straight and chest heaving, Weiss already knows what's going through her head.

(Painkillers only soothed the physical injury--)

"Where--?"

"Atlas," Weiss replies, gently shutting the door behind her. "I'm sorry, I made a snap decision to bring you here. I'm sure you'd much rather have been at home." But maybe not, not with Ruby missing, not with Blake gone -- not with Vale overrun with Grimm, not with Pyrrha hospitalized and everyone wondering if she would actually survive the wound burned into her --

Weiss doesn't ask her how she's feeling, doesn't express her relief that she's alive.

Yang isn't okay. Yang doesn't want to hear it.

But Weiss can't tell her what she wants to hear.

"Ruby? Blake? Beacon?"

Weiss' jaw tenses, lips pursing and eyes lifting to the canvas window the guest room sports. "Ruby is missing, Blake left, Beacon is a complete loss." Speaking is like pulling teeth, like pulling shards of glass out of her knuckles after she punched the reflection that mocked her in an attempt to erase it. It hurts and she feels like she's bleeding internally, the words having cut holes in her throat.

Yang makes a noise like Weiss had punched her, "What do you mean missing--left-- _Weiss_ \--"

She's halfway to the bed by the time Yang is half out of it, hands pressed to sturdy shoulders in an attempt to hold her down. It doesn't work, but Yang's legs refuse to hold her, the taller girl collapsing half against her as soon as her feet hit the floor. "Yang, please you need --" A hand fists in her collar, a red eyed glare meeting her own steadily determined one. 

"You can't tell me my sister is missing and my partner..." Yang chokes on the rest of her words, grip tightening, then loosening. " _Fuck_."

"We're doing everything we can to locate Ruby," she says, careful, the tooth pulling, glass shredding sting from before throbbing in her throat and lungs. "I promise, so please, please just rest." 

"I can't rest knowing that Ruby could be out there scared and alone or injured for all I know!"

Weiss' pain curdles into anger, her grip tightening on Yang's biceps. "If you haven't noticed, you're not exactly in the best state to be rushing off to try and find someone." It's easier to speak when she's angry, easier to force the words out when it burns like smoke. She musters her strength, shoving back against the normally too sturdy to move form and watches as Yang goes down, bouncing slightly against the mattress.

"Rest, I won't have you going out and getting yourself killed." 

They'd both lost enough already.

She leaves before Yang tells her to.

\----

A week passes in a blur of tense silences. Of sometimes empty, sometimes untouched trays of food and Yang's stare remaining fixated on the window. Weiss doesn't try to say anything, only looking at the other's curled shoulders and defeated slump, their exhaustion a perfect mirror.

 _Rest_ , she'd said.

 _Hypocrite_ , her mind spits as she leaves, tray balanced on her metal hand and steps swift.

\---

It's almost two weeks before Yang stops her, fingers curling around her wrist as she reaches to collect the (thankfully) empty tray. 

"You know, I expected your butler to be doing this, not you." It's a poor attempt at humor, but Weiss takes it for what it is.

"I figured you'd rather see a familiar face," she replies, releasing the edge of the tray and allowing Yang to pull her towards the edge of the bed. What she doesn't say is that she needs something else to do beyond sit in her room or train until everything that can hurt, hurts.

Yang's had slides away as soon as Weiss sits, perched careful and easy against the edge of the mattress. "Yea. Weiss...I--" 

"It's okay, Yang. You have nothing to apologize for."

"Nothing?" Yang scoots closer, leaning into her peripheral to grab her attention. "I lost my temper and then didn't talk to you for almost two weeks."

Weiss smiles, a little wry, a little bitter. I did the same thing, she thinks, recalling how she snapped at Winter and Whitley and refused to even acknowledge their existence for nearly a month before her older sister had enough and _made_ her pay attention. "You were shell-shocked, it was a lot to process all at once on top of everything that had already happened." She's careful not to mention Yang's missing arm, careful to keep her eyes angled on the other's face.

It's Yang that brings their attention to it, rolling her shoulder and lifting what's left of her bicep, wrapped neatly in Atlas grade bandages. "I'm still processing it."

"You will be for a while." Weeks, months, years later she'd still be dealing with it, no matter how well she might have adapted to it. The memory of a missing limb faded, but it never went away completely, only the ache did. She hopes Yang doesn't experience what she did.

"Sounds almost like you're speaking from experience." It's careful, not accusatory but searching. Prompting and Weiss smoothly side steps it.

"I'm still coming to terms with my own, yes." They all heard the screams, saw the Grimm, watched as everything they had come to call home was torn apart around them. They all fought until they didn't think they could fight anymore, and then pushed themselves further still. In the moment Weiss had to swallow down the memories the white fang brought up, fight her instinct to run when buildings crumbled and fire spread. She knew Blake had been fighting her own trauma then, could see it in the warring terror and determination in her eyes.

She didn't know what happened when they finally parted ways, but what she'd seen when Blake found them again had been enough to know it wasn't anything good.

"I'm glad you came out of it in one piece." Yang's head thumps against her shoulder as she speaks, fingers tangling in the arm of her coat. "I hate this," she says, gripping until Weiss feels the fabric bite into her skin. "I hate just sitting here and doing nothing, knowing that Ruby and Blake are out there somewhere and I'm here in this cushy bed in this huge manor, comfortable and safe and ---" She breathes in sharply and Weiss looks away, stares hard at the wall while Yang shake-shudders behind her with hitching sobs.

She stays where she is until Yang stills and grows quiet, until the silence stretches on so long Weiss wonders if the other girl had fallen asleep. "Why did she leave, Weiss?"

It's the one question she'd been dreading, the one she has to take the most care in answering. "Because the one thing she was so afraid of happening, happened."

Yang's grip tightens again, tightens until the sleeve of her jacket cuts off the circulation in her arm and her fingers begin to tingle. 

"If she had stayed we could have helped her. She could have come with us."

The laugh slips free before she can swallow it down, harsh and jagged like shattering glass. Yang twitches away from her, and Weiss refuses to meet her eyes. "I don't think she would have wanted to come here, where Faunus are treated like literal animals."

"Well then we could have stayed--"

" _You_ could have," she cuts in, glancing at Yang out of the corner of her eye. "You could have gone home with Blake where both of you could have recovered." Weiss didn't have the option, the fight she had with her father in the ruined courtyard still ringing distantly in her ears even now.

They fall into another silence, and Yang's hand slips away from her sleeve. She doesn't bother trying to work feeling back into it, letting it sit against her thigh. Sensation comes back slowly, numbness fading to tingling, then to a familiar burn that makes her hand ache each time she accidentally twitches.

Yang breathes in, words cut off by the knock on the door that draws both of them to look. 

"Yes?" Weiss calls, straightening as Klein pokes his head in.

"I'm sorry to interrupt Miss Schnee, but your father wishes to speak with you."

She's slow to stand, dread knotting in her chest. "I'll be there in a moment, thank you Klein." He bows out as her feet touch the floor, the whirr of joints like a gunshot in the silence. If Yang notices she makes no indication of it, their eyes meeting when Weiss turns.

"I'll be back," she says, reaching out to touch Yang's shoulder.

Her fingers are warm where they brush her wrist as she pulls away

**Author's Note:**

> This will probably be slower to update then Ashes to Dust.


End file.
